Product Overview
TIM Clean fluid removes all thermal interface residues including silver based and prepares the chipset surface for new thermal compound. A safe citrus base solvent which leaves no residue. Ideal for cleaning CPU, GPU, Northbridge, RAM etc). High performance AK-455 thermal compound has an advanced formula designed to maximise heat transfer from chipset/CPU to the heatsink enabling you to get more from your existing cooler. The high viscosity formula efficiently fills invisible surface imperfections to improve contact and thermal conductivity. 5g thermal compound syringe enough for 10-15 CPU cooler installations and 125ml bottle of TIM Clean will last for even more CPU surface preparations. TIM kit is a must have for every PC enthusiasts. Features
• Designed for all types of PC CPU's, GPU's and chipsets

Intel's consumer CPU focus is clearly on the 4th Generation Core Processor Family, codenamed Haswell, which launched in June of this year. Offering a smattering of extra performance over last-gen Ivy Bridge but with energy efficiency very much to the fore, you'd be forgiven for thinking the range-topping Core i7-4770K is the meatiest chip around.

While AMD has a proud history of developing benchmark-busting computer processors, there's no ignoring the fact that today's semiconductor giants are in a race to develop chips that are more efficient than ever before.

It's now three years since Intel released the Core i7 processor and associated X58 chipset, making up the LGA1366 platform. Then ushering in a new era for high-performance PCs and with numbers still to be bettered by AMD's rival Bulldozer chip, Intel's has the high-end desktop market sewn up for a while.

Intel’s been on a mission of late. That mission revolves around grouping and standardising key technologies under various banners that are designed to ensure hardware compatibility and consumer ease of use. We’ll take a closer look at three such technologies that fall under the headings of Centrino, Viiv, and vPro, respectively.

CUDA technology is the world’s only C language environment that enables programmers and developers to write software to solve complex computational problems in a fraction of the time by tapping into the many-core parallel processing power of GPUs.

This How-2 Guide explains what BIOS is and how it can be upgraded to the latest revision.
BIOS, which stands for Basic Input/Output System, is a integral software program that comes pre-loaded with your computer. Its purpose is to initially identify computer hardware and prepare the system to run other software such as operating systems.

Over the course of the last year or so we’ve seen GHz become less of a focus when it comes to processors. Instead, we’re seeing a shift towards processors that do more work per clock, have larger caches, are more power efficient, and of course we’ve seen dual-core processors hit the market. So what is dual-core all about, and how does it weigh up compared to single-core?

It’s been a long time since MHz were the only part of a CPU’s specification that concerned people. Manufacturers take different approaches to CPU design, even when using the same architecture. That means for example, at the same clock speed, an Intel and AMD processor will deliver different performance.

What makes a PC tick? Is it the processor, graphics card, RAM, or a plethora of other peripherals. It’s all those and more, but none would be much use without a means of connecting said components in an efficient manner. That’s where your humble motherboard comes in. Its job is to ensure that all devices can communicate correctly, and the beating heart of any motherboard is the chipset it’s based upon.

This TekSpek explains what AMD’s AMD64 CPU instruction set architecture (ISA) is, shows what CPUs implement it from both AMD and Intel, and explains what software is available to run on those 64-bit consumer processors.

The modern PC is potentially a mass of heat output and heat production hot spots. With CPUs rated at more than 100W of heat output, single graphics boards carrying similar ratings (and people want to run two!), multiple hard drives the norm, lots of memory and mainboards covered in heatpipes to combat toasty core logic and PWM circuits, a PC appreciably warming up a room when it’s working hard is no joke.

A motherboard’s main job is to act as a conduit between the various hardware elements that make up a PC. It needs to be able to link the desired CPU(s), system memory, graphics card, hard drive(s), and add-in cards and enable them to work in harmony.

If you’re the least bit interested in graphics cards, we’re sure that you’ve heard the terms SLI and CrossFire bandied about recently. Touted as a means of achieving maximum 3D performance by, effectively, using two or more graphics cards in tandem, multi-GPU technology is here to stay. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look SLI and CrossFire; the two competing multi-GPU solutions from NVIDIA and ATI Technologies, respectively.

This TekSpek will assume you know the affects of applying a level of anti-aliasing (AA) on your 3D accelerator, be it via the driver control panel or via a control in your game. We assume you know the effect it has on image quality, so you can think about a before and after scenario. So this TekSpek isn’t about explaining what it does as such, although it will, it’s about explaining the how and why.

Explaining how a modern GPU works in completeness would take a book. Or two. Per class of chip. Per vendor. They’re extraordinarily complex pieces of engineering and production, and the end result contains more transistors than multiple modern x86 processors.

Updating drivers can sometimes be a bit of a gamble. Will the drivers come with an installer? Will you need to uninstall the old drivers first? Many drivers these days do come with an installer, which simplifies the process dramatically.

Watercooling for the PC has been around for years in some form or another, for at least as long as Scan have been in business, with basic physics defining why you want to use it. That means for air cooling, to cope with increasing temperature in the heatsink you need to move the air across it faster. That is why thermostatically controlled fans in your PC will turn faster the hotter something gets.

We’ve all been victims of static electricity at some point. Perhaps somebody’s used a balloon to make your hair stand on end, or you’ve walked across the office and been ‘shocked’ by a metal door knob? That’s electrostatic discharge at work.

There’s a lot more to High Definition than just having the ability to run your screen at the right resolution. With more than one type of connection available, and the thorny subject of signal encryption to contend with, just because your monitor and graphics are capable of 1,920 x 1,080 or better does not necessarily mean they will be able to display HDTV in all its glory.

Rated 5 out of
5 by
PocketDyson from
Does what it says on the tinGreat product at a great price. Simple and quick to use.

Date published: 2015-05-18

Rated 4 out of
5 by
TelcommsDad from
Overheating KilledHad issues running my PC fan noise was louder than usual, during kids game sessions and watching video the PC would crash.
After confirming drivers were all up-to-date and checking system health decided the issue was likely due to overheating.
Visual inspection of processor and graphics card chips confirmed dry heat sink compound.
The products CPU cleaner works well and smells nice, the thermal compound has cured the overheating and the PC appears to be as good as new only time will tell how long it lasts before it needs to be replaced.